[COLLAPSE="This is a bit long, so I hope you can spare several minutes... maybe 5"]Final Fantasy VII
Now, before the fanboys and fangirls become butthurt over this, let me make one thing clear: I like Final Fantasy VII; it's a good game, a good RPG, and I'll still play it from time to time. So why do I think it's overrated? Well, it's a bit of a mix in this case, which I shall explain in the below paragraphs.
On one hand, Final Fantasy VII took a series that was more underground in popularity and not only did it bring Final Fantasy to the mainstream, but also help RPGs go mainstream. It's ironic how some people hate the fact that RPGs are mainstream, when its popularity pretty much ballooned out of control, and it wasn't as if Final Fantasy VII was trying to do that, so no one is really to blame but the consumer for the RPG popularity. Frankly, I don't mind the rise in popularity myself, as I'm a Final Fantasy/RPG game fan anyway. Also, at the time of the American release, everyone in the states only knew of Final Fantasy I, II, and III, the latter two actually being Final Fantasy IV and VI respectively, causing people to wonder, "what the hell happened to Final Fantasy IV, V and VI?". Of course, everyone knows the story behind that now, and it was Final Fantasy VII that restored the roman numerals to the series thanks to the Playstation being very liberal with their games, unlike Nintendo of America's more conservative guidelines and habits of renaming localized titles at the time. The music is very well known, and arguably one of the more famous works by Nobuo Uematsu and features possibly the most famous track, "One-Winged Angel", which was the first piece of music in the series to feature lyrics (albeit in Latin). It also left the story open for prequels and sequels, which we now have in the forms of Crisis Core, Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, etc., and has become even more popular than it has ever been. Its story also dealt with issues of life, death, and reincarnation, with Aerith's death being a pivotal point in the story. In fact, Aerith's death was a way for Hironobu Sakaguchi to express his sorrow of losing his mother during development of Final Fantasy VI, and the death of Aerith remains as one of gaming's most dramatic and saddest moments in the industry, and her theme music playing during the scene only made the sequence all the more heartbreaking.
Well, I've pretty much praised the game so much, so you might be wondering "what's so overrated about this gem?". The thing is, Final Fantasy VII isn't a perfect game, and is in fact far from perfect. For starters, there were quite a few things they wanted to implement into the game, but couldn't due to time constraints, and as a result, released the game before it was as complete as they wanted it to be. This is apparent in the fact that you had the Underwater Materia; a Materia that allowed the party to breath underwater, thus removing the 20 minute time limit for undersea battles. They wanted to incorporate aquatic exploration, in which random encounters underwater would be made possible. Wouldn't you know, they didn't incorporate it at all, and the Underwater Materia was never used... that was until the U.S. release when they added the two new optional superbosses in the form of Ruby WEAPON and Emerald WEAPON, the latter of which is fought underwater, thus giving purpose to the Underwater Meteria's use, if only for that one-time only battle. Then there's another Materia that - like the Underwater Materia in the original Japanese release - was programmed into the game's code, but cannot be accessed without hacking. This Materia is called "No Floor Damage", and as the name suggests, prevents damage from walking on hazardous floors. Of course, there are no hazardous floors, so use of this Materia was pointless.
Then you had character customization; don't get me wrong on this, character customization is fantastic, but in Final Fantasy VII, every character can be made to do the same exact thing, with the same exact stats, should you decide to grind long enough to max out everyone. While yes, Final Fantasy III was the first to do this with level 99 Onion Knights, that was more a secret reward that players had to figure out either by accident, word of mouth, or in today's society, GameFAQs. Final Fantasy V and VI weren't all that much different, as the Magicite system in VI meant you can have (almost) all characters learn every single spell in the game, but what separated them at that point were their stats, the equipment they were allowed to use, and their unique abilities, whether it's Cyan's Bushido or Sabin's Blitz. In V, you had a job system similar to III, but more refined and pretty much perfect. While yes, you can have an entire team of White Mages, each character had their unique stats that make certain jobs more effective to them than others, thus creating more strategy with a team of characters using a diverse set of jobs. Final Fantasy VII, on the other hand, dropped the ball on the fact that you can simply make every character do the same thing, like in VI, but with max stats, so it's not like one character is better at - say - magic than another, because they can all be equally good and efficient, thus removing the need for meticulous strategy-building; you can make your entire party gods by slapping on Master Materias, max stats, and call it a day. The only thing separating them at that point are their Limit Breaks. Final Fantasy VIII also had this issue with the Devour system, allowing you to max out all characters (though it took much longer than it did in VII). Final Fantasy IX finally got it right by not only making sure no one can do everything, whether it's have access to all magic, etc., but you also couldn't max out stats, and each character had a specific job in battle. Then Final Fantasy X came along and suffered the same way VII did.
Then there's the glitches, and my goodness were there a lot of them. Thankfully, under normal circumstances, the glitches can be avoided, but there are some glitches that can occur at some point unavoidably, namely the Pandora's Box glitch with the Zombie Dragon, and the Save Crystal glitch, which involves the item, "Save Crystal", which is obtained in the final dungeon (coincidentally enough where the Dragon Zombie is encountered), and can potentially ruin one's save data, even if used correctly. There were many programming oversights in the game, though not all are bad, as one glitch in particular allowed the duplication of battle items, which makes the game easier, though the glitch itself is only available near endgame.
Then there are a few more things they wanted to do with the game that they never did. One of them being the visuals. Yes, the Popeye arms of the overworld models are funny and have since been seen fondly, but their battle models by comparison were more proportionate and more detailed. They wanted to make it so that the battle models also reflected the way the characters would look in the overworld, but for one reason or another (probably time constraints), they never got around to doing that. There was then the multiple ending bit; Yuffie and Vincent are optional characters in Final Fantasy VII and has no impact on the story whatsoever, which is ironic in that Vincent's actual ties to Sephiroth, Hojo, and Lucrecia are actually quite deep, and they even gave him his own game. That aside, Final Fantasy VII was supposed to have multiple endings which reflected whether or not you had Vincent and/or Yuffie in your team. However, regardless of which character joined you, the result would still be an ending that treats it as if you have neither of them in your team. This can be attributed to time constraints yet again, but also due to disc space as well.
Basically, the game is far from perfect, whether it's programming errors/oversights, to things they wanted to implement not making the final cut, the game overall is actually quite a mess compared to other more polished titles. Also, the translation is very bad, whether it's due to misspellings to grammatical errors, and the reason being was that Sakaguchi was displeased by Ted Woolsey's work on Final Fantasy VI, so he had the game translated by his Japanese development team, and it certainly shows. As a result, Square (now Square-Enix) of America has hired professional translators to work with the Japanese developers in translating the script, rather than have translation done by one side or another.
In conclusion, as I said before, the game isn't bad, and it deserves its credit for putting Final Fantasy and RPGs on the map, as well as restoring the series' roman numerals. The characters and story are memorable enough as well. However, when given a second look, it seems rather clear that the game is largely unfinished, and has some glaring flaws. The battle system is okay. The Materia system and character customization would have made the game better for me had the game not allowed all characters to have beast stats across the board with proper grinding. It's basically a game that seemed rushed, and it's pretty obvious that it was. It still has a charm to it, but I always find it baffling that people call it the best Final Fantasy game in the series, when there are so many different Final Fantasy games with more engaging stories. Not that VII's wasn't engaging or anything, but there are better stories overall, though that is entirely opinionated. The best in the series? I say no. I will say it was certainly the most influential in the series, but greatness and influence do not necessarily go hand-in-hand.
tl;dr: Final Fantasy VII is overrated because of programming errors, they didn't implement everything they wanted to implement, the battle system prevented uniqueness in characters moreso than even Final Fantasy VI, had poor translation, and overall felt rushed.[/COLLAPSE]
). That means in order for a game to be overrated, the haters cannot overshadow the fans.
